45 Ways to Save Money By Saying No To Your Kids

Shopping with leads to a torrent of “I wants.” Via Shutterstock

My daughter is two and already, I dread grocery shopping with her. She can recognize candy and sweets just by the packaging (how DOES she do that?) She asks for many, many things we don’t need and so I’m constantly coming up with new ways to say no to her. But it’s so freaking hard! Anytime I’m tired, hungry, or have already said no so many times my head is spinning, it’s tempting to give in and say yes.

Saying yes is hard on my wallet and it teaches my kids that if they ask for stuff enough, I will eventually give in and say yes. By saying yes, I’m encouraging them to keep asking me for stuff! Which means it’ll take ever more stamina and persistence to say no. Short story, the more we teach our kids that we won’t give into their impulsive requests, the less we’ll have to say no to them. Kids are impulsive, and their spending requests reflect that.

Here are 45 ways to save money by saying no to your kids.

1. No. (Had to get the obvious one out of the way. :))

2. Not today, sweetie.

3. Not until_______.

4. Maybe later.

5. Ask me again tomorrow.

6. I don’t think so.

7. That doesn’t fit you.

8. We already have one at home.

9. That is not appropriate for_______.

10. Is that a need or a want?

11. If you want to buy that, you can save your own money.

12. No, we can make that instead.

13. No, we can borrow that from a friend.

14. No, we can rent that instead.

15. No, we can check that out from the library.

16. No, we can find that for cheaper on Craigslist.

17. No, but let’s check Freecycle for one from someone in our community.

18. No, it’s not on sale.

19. Let’s wait until we have a coupon.

20. We need to talk to ____before we buy that.

21. No, but you can put it on your Christmas list.

22. No, but you can put it on your birthday wish list.

23. No, you can’t have that, but you need to push the shopping cart now. (Distraction works with little ones!)

24. No, you can’t have that but do you want to ______ ? (If your kid has to do things herself, take advantage!)

25. No, because (reason why). But do you want to play I Spy? (Or another game, topic of conversation to distract him).

26. Try this: Pick her up and move her away from what it is that she wants and let her cry for a minute. Then she usually wants a hug and moves on. Consistency is key!

27. Try this: Echo what your child wants and how she feels about not getting it. If you kid says something like: “I’m sad. I’m crying.” Then you say, “I know you’re sad. You wanted to ____ and mama/daddy said no.”

28. Try this: Tell her ‘Mommy means what she says and says what she means.’

29. No, but will you help me pick out ___________(another item on your list)?

30. Try this: If your child insists on putting items in the cart that you don’t want to buy, let her. Then when you get to the cashier, discreetly tell the cashier that you don’t want it. This may no be the ‘correct’ way but it works for some. If a cashier gives you the evil eye, just think to yourself, it’s a lot better than a screaming child in your store!

31. Try this: Let her whine, cry, scream, throw a tantrum. Sometimes this behavior is unavoidable and by giving into threats of meltdowns, you’re teaching your kid that bad behavior is the way to get what she wants. Yes, it is embarrassing and awful, but what parent hasn’t been there?

32. No, that’s not for us.

33. No, that’s for someone else.

34. No, that doesn’t have our name on it.

35. No, that’s not for sale.

36. We don’t have enough money to buy that.

37. This is a store where we just look at things, we don’t take them home.

38. No, we’re only returning things today.

39. If you save up for it, you can have it.

40. If you pay for half of it.

41. If you still want it in 2 weeks, maybe then.

42. I would, but the rule is no buying ________ today. (This works surprisingly well with really little ones!)

43. It’s not in the budget, sweetie. (Bonus if this response kick starts a discussion about budgets!)

44. No, it’s not on our list.

45. The rule is we can only buy it if it’s on our list.

How do you save your wallet when shopping with kids?

Comments

It is so tempting to just say “leave your little one with your husband until she grows out of it”, isn’t it? However, I know from raising 8 kids that this, too, shall pass, and some of my favorite memories are from shopping with my kids when they were little. Saying no is definitely hard (I think it is actually harder when you are short of money than when you have plenty, because there is a little bit of heartbreak for yourself in the mix), but, if done properly, will teach them skills and resourcefulness they will use later in life. “No, but let’s sing a song” works (the VeggieTales theme seems appropriate for the produce section); “No, but you can have a free cookie from the bakery” is great if that is an option.

@Sarah H. I love your no, let’s sing a song! I’m going to add it to the list. 🙂

I agree, if you’re saying no because there is no money, there is heartbreak involved. Maybe a parent in this situation can respond by saying, “Will you help me pick out the tuna fish?” (or something else is IS on the list). I get the distinct impression that Lucy likes buying things, so letting her be part of the shopping is win for her. I focus on what is on the list, but present it as a choice for her, aka, Should we buy carrots?

My grocery store does not give out free cookies (my husband would go grocery shopping everyday if there was!) but I know Trader Joe’s and some other grocery stores offer free balloons.

The best thing I did was allow my son to choose one thing – one thing on my list of course – the kind of cereal, what kind of fruit, ect. Then when he asked for something, I would remind him he’d already made his choice or tell him that he was going to choose the cereal. Once in awhile I’d let him choose one thing that wasn’t on our list. But I still followed through with reminders that he’d already chosen something. I’d tell him he could put back what he’d chosen if he’d rather have the new thing he saw. (I sometimes had to remind him about 50 times in one shopping trip but be tough early on & you don’t have to say so often as they get older)

I also always set a price limit. When he was smaller I’d choose a few kinds of cereal & tell him he had to pick one. When he was older I’d set the price limit & tell him he could choose as long as it was under that price – I usually chose a middle of the road price for him. Occasionally I would tell him we’d splurged too much & needed to be strict that week. They need to hear that occasionally as they’re growing up – they see that you save for fun things & sacrifice at other times to have more later.

He learned quickly! He started asking – ‘do we have money for this?’ instead of I want or can I have this.

I did leave him home a few times. When he was around two, I left a full cart & took him home to his dad then turned around & went back without him. It was a great lesson. I warned him that if he wasn’t good he was going home & I would shop alone. At that age you have to totally follow through, they won’t remember a week later when you go shopping. I was lucky dad wasn’t busy that day. As he grew older I never had to leave him at home, I would only tell him I would leave him the next time & that was usually enough.

It works too when they begin to get some freedom in the store. When he was old enough to go off alone I would tell him to meet me at a certain spot at a certain time. If he wasn’t there on time, the next time we shopped he had to stay with me – very hard for a boy pushing for freedom from mom. I think I only had to keep him with me a few times before he learned that lesson.

One last tip that helped me when he was two – he had a little pull toy(a caterpillar) that he was only allowed to play with in the grocery store. I’d leave it in the car & he was only allowed to pull it along the aisles as I shopped. (that took some training as well but it was worth it for us) The toy kept his mind off of all the things he thought he needed. He wasn’t a runner though, I don’t think I would have done this if he’s been a toddler that constantly ran away from me.

@Jen Y So impressed with your creativity and diligence! You seem like you have strict rules, but that they are paying off for you and your son, and that you have adopted rules in a way that work with his natural personality. Great idea to let them bring a toy to pull when they are old enough to be bored sitting in the cart! That’s genius and I’ll definitely use it and I often do the grocery shopping with BOTH my girls. Older one is getting bored of sitting in cart, though.

Love that you are already teaching him financial lessons about splurging, saving, and having a budget. How do you handle allowances???

My son is actually grown now – married & buying his 1st house this month! :o)

I guess I was fairly strict compared to some. I do believe being consistent, following through on rules, explaining them clearly beforehand, ect all pay off quickly. I also tried to always say yes if it didn’t involve monwy. You know how they ask to do things when they’re small so, especially if it was free & reasonable I tried to say yes as much as I could or at the very least promise a time (& follow through) when he could do what he asked.

My husband & I never really agreed on how allowance should be done. I felt that some of it at least needed to be earned & he just wanted to give to him with no strings attached basically. We’ve always lived on a very strict budget & we started giving him an allowance around 5 or 6 – mainly to teach giving. We required him to save so much, give so much & then he could spend the rest. He never grew into a very big allowance. By high school it was still around $5 to $10 a week (he’s 21 now so that wasn’t that long ago). Though technically we gave him $25 to $50 a week in high school for gas money, athletics, dates, ect.

We were always very open with him about money as he grew up. We explained why we were spending/saving ect at appropriate age levels. For example around age 5 I took the time to explain how long dad had to work to buy something he wanted. So when he saw a toy he wanted we talked about how many hours dad had to work to pay for it. That made more sense to him than the actual cost. I explained he had to work this many days for us to live in our house, then that many more days to pay for food, ect then after all of that was paid for he worked so many days & we could do whatever we wanted with that money.

By middle school, he was helping us make decisions in the family budget. For example – we live in a rural area with very poor internet service at the time. We had dial-up & wanted to go to DSL but it just wasn’t in our budget. We’ve always given all three of us an allowance so we all agreed that we would cut our allowances in order to pay for better internet service.

He does his own taxes, has a pretty nice 401k for a 21 yr old, drives an older car rather than make car payments & has done a great job in choosing a reasonable starter home well within their budget. So, I guess my husband’s generosity to him in his allowance didn’t hurt him any.

I think you need to look at the personality of your child. If you have more than one it’s harder to customise it to their personality because you want to be fair. Because we were always open with him about money – never money worries when he was small – just how money works & how we control it – I think he was more considerate & didn’t feel so entitled to things because he understood from an early age we work together as a family to have healthy finances. He rarely asked for money from us even when we knew he didn’t have enough. If he had acted entitled, unappreciative…we would not have been so generous.

I often made comments about money too – just like we do other good characteristics we want our kids to learn. We had paid our mortgage off by the time he was 6 yrs old & were debt free by the time he was 10. I often remarked through middle & high school that he wouldn’t be doing some of the things he did if we had not been strict with our money when he was young. By the time he graduated he high school he had told me how glad he was that we’d worked hard to be debt-free. He could clearly see the benefits to him because of that & he appreciated it.

Sorry so long but one last thought. We did occasionally take away allowance as a punishment but for him it just was not as effective as taking away other things like tv, computer time, video game time especially.

@Jen Y You are an amazing parent, Jen! I applaud you for being consistent with your son. I’m surprised at 5 your son could understand buying things in “hours worked” but I’ll keep that in mind when my daughters are a bit older. I don’t remember my Mom talking much about money, except to let me balance her check book for $1 and to insist that we had to pay off our entire credit card balance if we ever got one. I suppose it worked, though!

My husband and I have not talked much about allowances, but I hope we can agree to a system when the time comes. I enjoyed having an allowance and my mom’s system of receiving allowance in exchange for doing a “family chore” (from a selected list of chores that rotated) seemed fair at the time. My husband’s Dad just gave him spending money when he asked for it. I think he liked to keep tabs on what his son (my husband) was buying. He must have learned frugality and restraint another way, because my husband is even tighter to spend than I am!